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Description The Velux Stiftung Healthy Ageing Research Funding Programme is requesting application to support research that explores how environments and social contexts shape health and quality of life in older age, with a growing focus from 2026 onwards on environmental factors that sustain or enhance functional ability. Their approach recognises that healthy life expectancy is not solely the result of individual choices but is deeply influenced by homes, communities, systems, and broader social structures that either enable or restrict participation, autonomy, and wellbeing in later life. They support innovative, impact-oriented projects that go beyond incremental advances and instead introduce new perspectives, interdisciplinary bridges, or overlooked topics with the potential to initiate meaningful change. Research is expected to demonstrate a clear vision of impact and include concrete plans for knowledge transfer to relevant target groups, ensuring that outcomes contribute to real-world improvements in healthy ageing. Projects they support include work on quality of life and the ageing heart, retirement and second language learning, empowering individual capabilities, new perspectives for healthy ageing, real-life activities to reduce cognitive ageing, social support availability to promote cognitive function, assessing mobility in daily life, and understanding how changes in touchscreen behaviour may signal the need for early interventions. They do not fund research aimed at slowing, pausing, or reversing the biological ageing process, nor do they support biomedical research focused on the aetiology, diagnosis, or therapy of age-related diseases. Research projects may be basic or applied, with a duration of one to four years and a funding request of approximately CHF 50,000 to CHF 100,000 per year. Requests exceeding CHF 100,000 per year require prior consultation. Overhead, indirect, or organisational costs are not funded. Eligible projects must demonstrate a clear strategic fit with the Healthy Ageing funding area and an impact-oriented approach. Funding decisions are based on impact, scientific quality, and appropriate use of resources, with scientific excellence being necessary but not sufficient on its own. The principal investigator must be a permanent employee of a legally accountable academic research institution and act on behalf of their organisational unit, which is responsible for grant management, compliance, and reporting. Co-principal investigators may be included, up to a maximum of three, while collaborators may contribute without limitation. Applications falling outside their strategic funding areas, lacking sufficient detail, proposing only incremental progress, failing to include knowledge transfer activities, or previously rejected are not eligible. Projects that could reasonably be funded by national agencies must clearly justify why adequate alternative support cannot be obtained. Applications from non-eligible countries, as defined by Swiss regulatory and international compliance requirements, are also excluded.

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